


Artificial Larynx

by nbenrey-real (celestial_archivist)



Series: A Watsonian Perspective [2]
Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half-Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: Angst, Autistic Gordon Freeman, Character Study, Child Death - Discussed, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Mentions of Cancer, Nosophobia, Other, Pregnancy, References to Illness, Trans Gordon Freeman, Trans Male Character, Unplanned Pregnancy, a Trans Male character gets pregnant, because gordons ex is a prick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24954778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestial_archivist/pseuds/nbenrey-real
Summary: You are Gordon Freeman. You are currently in the process of earning your PHD in theoretical physics from MIT, and you have not slept properly in more than two weeks. You are furiously trying to focus, with shaking hands and blurry eyes, to finish your Thesis Paper, a complex work about the teleportation of matter through the use of extremely dense elements.Your son’s name is Joshua, and his favorite food is cashews.He is very, very sick. You are very, very scared.You need to finish your thesis.
Series: A Watsonian Perspective [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1806124
Comments: 12
Kudos: 136





	Artificial Larynx

**Author's Note:**

> Further Tags: gordon might sound weird this is the first fic ive ever actually written and posted my guys, and frankly good amount of Gordons brain shit is projection im valid, i hope im tagging correctly ;v;, ao3 keeps rearranging my tags so sorry they're so messy :/

You are Gordon Freeman. You are currently in the process of earning your PHD in theoretical physics from MIT, a feat which you have been looking forward to ever since you managed to scrounge up the four-hundred-and-thirty-five dollars needed to make your name legally official. You are furiously trying to focus, with shaking hands and blurry eyes, to finish your Thesis Paper, a complex work about the teleportation of matter through the use of extremely dense elements.

You have not slept properly in more than two weeks.

Even with your parents and brothers help, student loans still wrack up debt faster than any person can reasonably handle. You were not concerned about this- after all, teleportation technology is a hot new field, and your young age combined with your intelligence makes you a promising candidate, in spite of what discrimination exists in both science and academia. You already are getting offers from various companies, though none pay quite enough- you have full confidence that if you can just complete this thesis, prove your worth, that some offer will come through that will change the course of your entire life.

You have other, more pressing concerns.

You have always, _always_ loved kids. They’re everything you wish you could be- unrestrained, curious, capable of learning so much and willing to accept what they see in front of them and change as they learn new things- you envy it, really. Your anxiety as a child- born from unnamed dysphoria, a mishap with buttercups that left you with a deep-seated fear of illness, and an overly-reckless older brother who never seemed to register just how fragile mortality is - made you grow up faster than all your peers, always worrying.

Intelligence only furthered this- being ‘gifted’ came with expectations from teachers, the ability to understand what you were reading about the world bred horror at the things it held- you obsessed over what radiation could do, how exactly it destroyed the human body, the ways it was harnessed for cruelty- the ways it could be even worse- for _years_ after you first read about it as a child. The desire to harness the unknown into something beneficial rather than horrifying is what inspired your desire to become a physicist. 

  
The world is terrifying, and not at all kind. 

Yet- humans aren’t born cruel, no matter what slurs the so-called social darwinists yell at you when you stim too publicly. Humans are born with the ability to understand others emotions and respond in kind- babies will giggle at people who are happy, or smile at those who look sad. A child who hears another crying will attempt to give them their toy, will find leaves and twigs to patch up wounds received in play. They say the first sign of civilization is a healed femur, is others carrying the wounded on their back. 

You wanted to be that for someone- a soft light in the dark, leading to a better place.

Before you transitioned, you really did consider becoming pregnant, briefly- transitioning would make you infertile, they said- but who were you to have a baby, to bring someone into a world that's so incredibly cruel when even you- who were older, wiser, more toughened to it- were unhappy and confused? How could you give a child the love they needed, when you sometimes can’t find love in humanity given all its flaws?

Even then, you wondered- but you get so, so, so _angry_ at the way the world is sometimes, your chest filling up with hot fire like a thermite reaction. You _hate_ humanity, hate that it built these systems up and let them _fester_ until they kill everything they touch, like the brine pools your mother studies. Sometimes you fantasize about your rage burning until it makes you into something terrifying beneath your skin, bursting out to burn down this rotting rock, break the bones of everything humanity has ever built, make every person who chooses cruelty burn and break too, hurt as much as the cruelty they spread.

It’s terrifying. It makes you afraid of yourself, what you could do if just pushed enough.

So you decided not to bother- focus on your own mental health first, get a good job and a stable income. Somehow reconcile a world that hates you with the message on the voyager record, half a hundred different hellos to anyone who might be listening, a simple ‘we're here’ to inspire another- something that when you think about it still makes something ache in your chest and tears spring to your eyes, even years after you first read about. You’re told you’ll be infertile, you’re told if you want children you should consider freezing your eggs- but storage is expensive, surrogacy is complicated, the chances of success are small- and maybe you really just shouldn’t have kids at all.

You sign the consent form to start testosterone without even blinking.

You really should’ve known your crap doctors didn’t know shit about trans medicine.

The pregnancy is not exactly intentional- you’re far too knee-deep in thesis research to even consider something that insane, and after the last blow up with that particular ex-boyfriend left a hole in your wall and you half ready to get a restraining order, you don’t want anything to do with him. Honestly- you probably should've just removed the problem entirely, the potential mental, social, and health complications so high. You were considering it, too, anxiously thinking about just how much pregnancy costs in the US, the amount of time you’d lose with the hospital visits- not even getting into the birthing and subsequent recovery periods after.

It only takes one ultrasound for that to go out the fucking window.

You knew this was going to be awful, that you were going to be miserable and stressed and tired. You knew this is going to majorly fuck up your life, make finding a position in your field even harder than it would’ve been already- but looking at little hands and little face springs to mind all the things you used to fantasize about, and for once the ache in your chest goes away, replaced with excitement and joy. You want so, so _badly_ to be a father in that moment, and the thought of giving it all up to fulfill some capitalist nonsense notions of success is ridiculous.

So, you say fuck it. You’ve already had to bite and claw your way up, what's one more stone?

You’re right, of course- it royally fucking sucks. You’re anxious constantly about the lack of testosterone shots, the growing bump on your belly and the ensuing dysphoria, any possible complication that could hurt you or the baby, the thought of your jackass of an ex somehow finding out they're his and trying to wriggle into having any semblance of custody. Your grades slip- not by much, considering you were at the top of your classes- but enough that teachers start to get worried. Your paranoia gets worse, you start having nightmares- everything always somehow seems to come back to your growing son and what the hell your plan is after you have him.

After enough panic attacks, John makes you stay at his apartment. You’re secretly thankful.

Joshua’s birth is almost a relief after everything. It’s less scary than you thought it would be, and even though you’re more exhausted than you’ve ever been in your life, holding your son- your little Joshua- and seeing his teal little eyes sparkle in the fluorescent hospital lighting makes you feel like you could take on the apocalypse with only a crowbar. Even John, who had his doubts, makes the biggest grin when he looks at them, and when you let him hold them he wiggles around in a little circle making nonsense noises and rhymes with ‘Joshie’. You love your son.

You really, really, really love your son. You are so incredibly scared for him.

It started small- you were lucky to catch it, really. You’d like to suppose your constant anxiety and paranoia surrounding illness was useful here. Joshua gets a cough, a sore throat- it goes on for a week straight. You go to the doctor, who gives you antibiotics, says it’s likely the flu- it’d been being passed around at college. It still doesn’t go away. His sweet little voice begins to get hoarse, his ears start bothering him- you worry about meningitis and other infections in the blood or brain. When he starts making a high-pitched wheezing sound at night, you check over him yourself, frantic on the phone with the medical student you know from your dorm.

You found a lump in his neck.

You don’t smoke. Never really picked up the habit, too nosophobic to even touch the damn things- even if everyone in your life liked to tell you to take a damn toke for once. Cancer’s been in your peripheral for ages- a terrified special interest in the effects of nuclear radiation and chemical spills will do that to someone- but no one in your family has any history there. You break down and ask your ex, but he just laughs in your face and slams the door, saying some bullshit about how ‘it's probably not even mine’. 

You cannot for the life of you figure out how your son managed to get Laryngeal Cancer.

You are up to your eyeballs in medical dept, now, student loans long forgotten. You have not slept properly, too busy taking your son between appointments, talking to whatever experts you can, comforting him as he cries. He is so, so tiny, and so, so scared. You are absolutely terrified, but you put on a brave face for him and bite your knuckles through the panic attacks. 

Your parents and your brother are doing their best to help, but there is only so much money to go around, and your insurance was meager at best- all you could afford on a college salary. Your son needs you to keep working, to get a job that's willing to cover the things that will keep him alive and save his life. He needs you to push past lack of sleep and lack of food and lack of sanity on your part, because if you cannot he might not make it to his fourth birthday.

You are Gordon Freeman. Your son’s name is Joshua, and his favorite food is cashews. 

He is very, very sick. You are very, very scared.

You need to finish your thesis.

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of people had the concept of Joshua using an Artificial Larynx, which when combined with the fact that Gordon's canonically only 27 and a graduate of MIT with a PHD in theoretical physics- well. You can imagine the kind of stress that'd cause. I started writing this just as a concept for a discord angst discussion and i accidentally wrote too much asdfg


End file.
